


Tuuri Hotakainen and the Case of the Missing Pencils

by TheSuppository



Series: The Case Files of Tuuri Hotakainen [1]
Category: Stand Still Stay Silent
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, New Zealand, Swearing, but only a little from a few people, in high school everyone swears yay
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-03-06
Updated: 2015-11-13
Packaged: 2018-03-16 14:22:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,892
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3491585
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheSuppository/pseuds/TheSuppository
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This year is Tuuri Hotakainen's first year in a foreign country, as well as in high school. Truly, this cliched situation is a hell within a hell. Just like any other student in the country, Tuuri has to juggle her social life, her grades and her free time, while maintaining her sanity so as to not be like her cousin Lalli. However, thanks to the efforts of the school's unique after-school clubs, Tuuri, Lalli and her classmate, Emil, are also embroiled in multitudes of cases (one of which being the aforementioned pencil theft in the Art Department) that seem to add up to something... Unseemly.</p><p>These cases may answer some questions and open many others. However, the real question Tuuri has for herself is: will she pass her driving test?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. It was Never a Dream

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello, everybody! Like I'll say in the end notes, this is my first fanfic, so don't expect this to be any good. This may actually hold the claim to the first Highschool AU in the fandom. I don't really think so, since when this was first posted, practically nothing happened in the chapter, so this fic could've gone anywhere.
> 
> Anywho, I've kinda rewritten this entire chapter as well as written the the second (it's going through it's second draft at the moment), so I'd really recommend you read it now, before the second one gets upload sometime next week.  
> Please enjoy!
> 
> Dislaimer: I do not own Stand Still Stay Silent. The webcomic is a product of Minna Sundberg, Our Lady and Saviour. I would also like to say that anything you may recognise does not belong to me.

 

> _Tūngia te ururua, kia tupu whakaritorito te tupu o te harakeke._
> 
> **_–Māori proverb_ **
> 
>  

If Tuuri were to look back on her first day of school, she would probably find it fairly obvious why it was such a bad one after remembering that particular morning.  
  
Case in point: she woke up at half past seven in the morning when her alarm was set for six, which meant that she still had one hour to get to school. However, this included the time it took to prepare herself for it, as well as travel time.

Most of the preparation was done the night before, it seemed. There was a ready-made bag stuffed to the brim with exercise books and the rest of Tuuri's stationery. It was plopped next to the bedroom door, which for some reason had a picture of a random attractive man holding a picture of a cat stuck on it. On the top right hand corner of the picture was one name: Ed Sheeran. She had no idea who he was.

There were some clothes on the chair near Tuuri's bed where she was still lying when Lalli’s alarm clock began blaring incessantly. She ignored it in favour of getting up and looking at the garbage on her chair. It was better to leave his alarm alone so he actually woke up on time.

There was a skirt that looked like something an old lady would wear to a funeral, plain white socks and a white blouse with some random orange stripes on the collar. So far this seemed like a school uniform, which would be unpleasant to wear, seeing as she had never worn such things before. However, this nightmare of a pile hadn't finished dishing out its surprises. Right underneath the aforementioned items, there was a jersey with the most vomit-inducing colour one could ever have on a jersey: bright neon orange. Any other bright orange clothing would work, or a different shade of orange, but a neon orange jersey? What were the designers thinking, "We have the worst drivers in the world, so let's make everyone safe by giving them a bright colourful jersey!" or something?

Tuuri would rather be dead than be seen wearing that horrid rag. Or any of those abominations lying on that chair.  
  
As everything that seemed important was already packed, Tuuri went down the fairly narrow steps to the dining area for a good healthy breakfast.

* * *

When she went downstairs, though, Tuuri got a huge surprise in the form of Lalli Hotakainen. He was the type of person you'd expect to be a vampire in disguise. His build was not unlike one of those trees you'd find in the savannah. You would have thought that he came from the Equator, if you had never seen his platinum blond hair or his blindingly white skin.That he was able to survive the harsh winds of Auckland, let alone those back home in Finland, was a constant surprise.  
  
Normally, Tuuri's cousin wouldn't have surprised her. However, he did something that she didn't expect.

He was already awake. His brilliant blue eyes pierced into Tuuri's soul like they never did before, like he knew all her secrets. Tuuri was accustomed to seeing them staring at a computer screen, not staring at her face.  
  
"What are you doing up so early?" she said while figuring out what to eat.  There was deliciously fatty bacon, probably cooked by her brother, waiting for her on the kitchen bench. She hadn't had that in so long. Especially after she had moved in with Lalli after The Accident.  
  
"What do you mean?" Lalli asked in his typical whispery voice as he poured himself a bowl of whole wheat cereal. "You woke up late and you're asking me how I'm early? Well, for your information, even if I play online games with people in America, it doesn't mean that I can't wake up early for school."  
  
There was a pause in the conversation. Had it been another situation, this lull in the conversation would have seemed awkward, like those pauses comedies have to elicit laughter. For the Hotakainens, this pause was the only normality in this, and Tuuri had two choices: call Lalli out or say nothing in response to his weird outburst.  
  
"You didn't sleep at all, didn't you?" Tuuri chose the third option: self-denial.

"Nope." And so the social pantomime began.  
  
"Aren't you supposed to be sleeping eight hours to be healthy and ready for action?"  
  
"Aren't you supposed to be on a diet?" Lalli was currently eating spoonfuls of soggy bran flakes.  
  
Tuuri looked at her slightly chubby stomach, then at the pile of bacon she put on her plate and then back at Lalli. "Touché."

She made sure to ignore that suggestion.

As she got a closer look at the tall teen sitting on the rather plain-looking stool skewered on the linoleum tiled floor of a tiny kitchen shoved to the side of the house, she realized something.  
  
His thin frail body was sitting on a neon orange jersey.  
  
"Why are you on that thing?" Tuuri asked just as Lalli finished his bowl.

Tuuri happened to look at the clock on the wall behind Lalli. It was twenty to eight.  
  
Lalli gave her a look. "What thing?"  
  
"That thing," Tuuri she motioned in his general direction. "That thing you're sitting on."  
  
"This thing?" He gestured down in a very dramatic way, just as silence was heard from the master bedroom. Lalli’s parents weren't there anymore. They used to be more productive even after The Accident, though that could have been a way to cope. "I'm just sitting on it now so I don't have to remember to wear it later for school. Also, these chairs are hard, you know."  
  
Tuuri spat out her bacon. "That's our uniform? What is wrong with the world! How am I supposed to even wear this—"  
  
"Piece of dog shit that should be burned to death and then scattered across the Altiplano, wherever that is," Lalli said while washing his bowl. "That was what you were going to say, right? You've been saying that, like, twice a day."  
  
"I wasn't going to say that," Tuuri said, eyes firmly on her bacon. Technically, that statement was true. What she was going to say was, 'piece of troll bits that should be burned to death and then scattered across the Silent forests of Sweden'.

In hindsight, that may have been weird. Really, who even says ‘troll bits’?

* * *

It took about twenty minutes for Tuuri Hotakainen to actually get ready for school. Lalli was already at the front door, raring to go.  
  
Outside the front door was the road. It was a busy road, with cars of all colours and shapes rushing past the driveway. Normally, there would be a black car that looked like it was from the 60's in front of the door. The owner of the car left for work ages ago, so for the meantime, Tuuri and Lalli had a clear path out of the house.  
  
"What took you so long?" Lalli asked his elder in a not quite respectful way.  
  
"I didn't really want to put on my uniform," Tuuri said. "Also, my hair was hard to tame." Her platinum blond hair was just tied into a ponytail, so Lalli wasn't convinced. "Anyway," she continued, "let's go. It's eight oh five. We're going to be late, aren’t we?"

Lalli looked at her quizzically. "No."

So they walked to the bus stop, and they said nothing for nothing needed to be said.

Except Tuuri had this extreme paranoia that everything that could go wrong, would go wrong. It was like as if she thought that some sort of mutated monstrosity was going eat them off the street. So, she did what she normally did when she was nervous: talked. Actually, no. That wasn't what she normally does; normally, she sort of clams up, which meant that she doesn’t normally make small talk. Just like Lalli, usually.

Today, Lalli was just weird. He seemed to have already used up the maximum number of words he normally uses in a week in one morning conversation about her fat and the horrible uniform. Did the sauna-like temperatures here permanently frazzle Lalli’s brain so he has the capability for small talk?  Or was he just, somehow in the mood? Or was it something else entirely? Tuuri had no clue. She had her suspicions, but she knew nothing.

To distract her mind from this weird out-of-character moment and to test if this was actually part of his new personality that she somehow didn’t know (as contradictory as those motives may seem) Tuuri asked a simple question.

While walking.

Her body seriously wasn’t cut out for this. Maybe that diet thing was a good idea after all (alright, fine. So she didn’t ignore the diet thing, sheesh. Her mind wasn’t built to just ignore stuff).

"Hold on, Lalli," Tuuri said, each word seemingly punctuated by a breath. Just like semi-colons used by people who can’t use semi-colons. "You remember what bus we need to catch? I forgot."

"It doesn't matter,” Lalli said, thereby confirming small talk as part of his personality now. It seemed like this walking thing was ridiculously easy for Lalli. Damn him.

“As long as we get to the bus stop on time, we should be good."

* * *

Five hundred and fifty metres away from the bus stop, six hundred and fifty seven point five metres from Lalli's blue house on the corner of the street, and ten years, fifty days and six hours earlier, a cicada hatched from its egg. The nymph was the colour and size of Tuuri's pinky. Soon after it was born, it burrowed into the ground next to a nearby power pole and settled in for a good decade's rest.

Alas, it was not to be.

Deep within the bowels of the earth, the baby cicada, not having lived yet, had a dream.

In the dream, he was already an adult, flying high in the sky the colour of his blood when a butterfly floated up to him. It was of many colours, though its wings were predominantly grey. It was twice as big as him, though it seemed like it wasn't.

There is nothing you can do, it said, its voice deep and gravelly to shake the ground, except die.

It said nothing else and it did not allow the young cicada to answer for it lunged towards his heart, aiming to skewer him with its proboscis. Then, at the critical moment between life and death, just before the sharp mouth pierced his exoskeleton, the cicada woke up.

He would have woken up in a cold sweat, if cicadas sweat. Ten years had passed and the nymph was now an adult, ready to take life's blows and crumple beneath them in two weeks after getting it on with some other near identical cicada. That was what Mother Nature had in store for him.

And he knew, more than most, that you can't avoid fate.

On that note, the cicada flew away from his burrow, if that was the proper appellation for the hole where he spent his entire childhood doing nothing but dream dreams that he may or may not have had, in order to find a mate.

* * *

On his quest to find his one true love, he landed on Tuuri's hand, startling her pants off.

It only slowed them by one minute, so instead of arriving at the bus stop at eight ten, they arrived at eight eleven. This, as all physicists know, makes all the difference.

But what was the difference? One minute ago, the crowded school bus that was meant to bring the pair to school ten minutes early left the bus stop. Of course, Tuuri and Lalli could’ve ran to the next one, but they didn’t. This was for two reasons. The first was that there wasn’t that much traffic at that particular moment for some reason, so the bus wouldn’t have been slow enough for Tuuri to catch up to it in time before it left the next one. The second: the bus stop was actually quite close to the school at a respectable 30 minute walk away. It was at least close enough that if she caught the bus any closer to the school, she would risk the scathing murmurs of her peers within﹘ mainly because those school buses were almost as crowded as an Asian train. But, like most of Tuuri’s ramblings, that wasn’t the point.

The point was: Tuuri now had to wait about ten minutes for another bus to come and pick them up. What did Lalli think of the change in plans?

“It turns out we’re not good.” Lalli turned to Tuuri, a frown tainting the calm serenity that was his face. “Thanks a lot, Tuuri.”

The bus that came (it was about eight twenty two at that point. Tuuri checked the clock on the bus when she sat down) was a white one, though that detail was inconsequential for someone like Tuuri. She, not having lived in New Zealand for very long, just pays in cash. Lalli, on the other hand, has a bus card that gives him a discount at select buses that aren't white (or brown, but when are brown buses ever going to Albany?). He was pretty pissed off that he took it out for nothing.

"Two one stages, please." Lalli said to the bus driver while giving her a medium sized gold coin as payment for the trip. Tuuri merely waited behind him.

After paying, Tuuri sat down next to someone who waved her over just in time for the bus to get going.

"So, you're late, too, huh?" The stranger said in an accent that was almost completely different to what she expected—or, indeed to what a native speaker of English would sound like. The stranger in question was a female in her teens. She was, if Tuuri's judgements on the heights of seated people were correct, slightly taller than Tuuri. But then, most everyone was taller than Tuuri, so that comment made no difference in Tuuri's mental description of this person. "At least I'm not going to be the only one who'll die by Noseworthy's hands today. He seems like a real stuck-up bitch."

"That's...comforting."

"Anyway," the stranger continued, leaning on Tuuri like a dog craving a treat, "how's your stay? Did anything exciting happen?"

"Not really." Tuuri replied. "You?"

The stranger snorted, which was not befitting of a lady of her stature. The elderly that got on the stop after slapped the stranger by the back of her head. There were two old ladies sitting behind them, so the stranger earned two slaps for that snort. "To borrow a phrase from the natives: yeah, nah. I barely did anything while you were gone.

“But," Here, she paused to engender some sort of effect, "since you pretty much had no internet in Rotorua— ugh, the savages!— I have documented all the things you missed, like you asked."

Upon saying that, the stranger gave Tuuri three journals, seemingly stuffed to the brim with writing. "Thanks," Tuuri said. "I'll get started with reading these."

She was about to open one of them when the stranger stopped her in her tracks by saying, "What about mine? What did I miss while I was gone?"

Tuuri retreated, like she always did, back into her brain while she thought about what to do. She remembered nothing of the sort! What was she going to say? Will the stranger break their friendship, tenuous as it is (she had no idea who that person was, anyway), just because she forgot to do that simple thing?

She thought hard about it.

She thought harder.

She thought about it as hard as she could when the perfect thing to say popped up in her head: "Sorry, I think I forgot my journals for you."

They shared a laugh, the stranger's less awkward than Tuuri's. "That's okay," the stranger said, calming Tuuri down. "Just give it to me on Tuesday."

Tuesday?

"Why Tuesday?" Tuuri asked. "Why not Monday?" After all, Monday was the first day when all work-related stuff was able to be done.

"Waitangi Day, silly!" The stranger leaned forward and placed a hand against the side of her mouth, as if she were telling Tuuri a secret. "Though, teh beh ash, I think that we should just skip Friday and make it a four day weekend. I really want my sleep!"

The stranger looked out the window. "Oh! We're here! Tuuri, we should probs hurry up. It's eight thirty three already!"

Really? Vittu, she thought as she got off the bus, ready to follow the stranger and run up the stairs leading to her class. Or at least, where she thought it was.

Before following the stranger, Tuuri looked for Lalli, but this cursory search was in vain. He seemed to have vanished just after all the late students on the bus left. He probably went to class, though knowing school, they wouldn’t have been in the same class. There was no use trying to look for him now. Maybe when there’s a break.

She hoped the stranger, after giving her those journals, would lead her in the right direction.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you, stclairvoyant, for beta-reading my work. I'm extremely embarrassed that this isn't as long as the others, but, oh well. Please Read and Review my first ever fanfic, as the cliche goes.
> 
> EDIT I would also like to thank SectoBoss and VincentTheSheep for beta-reading the new chapter one.
> 
> Some notes on the story:
> 
> The proverb translates to: Burn the undergrowth so the new growth can sprout. I'm paraphrasing here.
> 
> The stranger is Quebecois so instead of saying tee bee aitch for TBH, she says teh beh ash. I'm pretty sure that's a thing. Please correct me if I'm wrong. I've only figured this from one Parisian French Youtube channel saying duble vay teh eff for WTF.
> 
> Also, Waitangi Day: the day is on the sixth of February and celebrates the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi in 1840. This is often seen as the birth of the modern nation of New Zealand, though this was only codified in World War One, and this is excluding the independent nation created two years earlier and subsequently annulled by the Treaty. The contents of the treaty is still a cause of dispute to this day due to the various ambiguities and biases the Treaty had toward the British settlers.
> 
> Now echoing the pleas of my former self, please review! I will give you squirrel cookies if you do!


	2. The Path of Multiple Divergences

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey! Here's a new chapter! Thank you, VincentTheSheep for once again beta-reading this thing.
> 
> The next chapter will be posted probably in a couple of months, since I have exams going on at the moment and I haven't actually written the next one yet.
> 
> Some additional disclaimers to the last chapter:
> 
> These characters do not belong to me, but to stclairvoyant:
> 
> Anna Okalik  
> James Noseworthy  
> Charlotte Bélanger

 

> _Our people once were warriors...They were people with mana, pride; people with spirit. If my spirit can survive living with you for eighteen years, then I can survive anything._
> 
> _**–Beth Heke, Once Were Warriors (1994)** _

When our ancestors evolved the capacity to think about those sorts of things, light became a sign of hope and comfort. From the sun in the sky to the artificial fires at night, light brought happiness and knowledge to the peoples of old. Conversely, the concept of darkness became the symbol of death and the unknown.

These categories persisted through trials of time, and they stayed with us for generations. Each generation of our people adding something new in each. Soon, barring well-meaning scientists trying to remove those connotations, everything was in its place.

Almost everything.

What Tuuri saw framed by the doorway belonged to neither domain. It was almost grey, but not like those fake greys made from a combination of white and black. It was a grey that transcended the colour spectrum entirely, like a God taking mortal form among his subjects.

Tuuri feared it with all her heart.

Still, even with this foreboding greyness looming before her, she had to keep going. For her sake, and for Lalli's.  
She went through the grey mist-like substance, wondering all the while why she was even doing this. Was it because someone was hurt? Was it Lalli's fault? Guðmundur's? Or did her sick-minded curiosity pull her into this mess?

She didn't know.

She didn't care.

She just had to know that everyone was alright. She had to persevere.

And look at where that perseverance got her: a shocked face, a sight that scarred her mind forever and an observer from the past.

Really?

Yes. This entire thing happens in the future, lucky for you. At the moment, Tuuri was still on her way to class, following that nice stranger she met on the bus with no trouble. Apart from meeting that cute-looking Asian guy on the way, momentarily distracting her from the stranger's path.

She didn't really want to remember that momentary lapse in judgement.

Other than that... incident, the journey went without a hitch, taking only eight minutes (it would've taken five minutes, except boy happened). Soon she was standing alone in front of the classroom door, the stranger probably already inside.

The white door was the entrance for an English classroom. Tuuri could tell because there were movie and book posters, all published or released before she was born, stapled to the walls in the corridor where the door was placed. Also among those esteemed scraps of paper were the hallmarks of the teachers themselves: posters detailing common grammatical mistakes, random phrases in both French and an Inuit language, as well as puns, for some reason. One of the puns affixed on the wall went like so: I did a theatrical performance about puns. It was a play on words.

However, the real evidence for the subject of the corridor was at the entrance to the corridor; there, above the entrance was a sign that clearly said, 'English'. That was pretty indicative of the nature of Tuuri's first class.

At the door was the stranger, who walked in, apologizing profusely to someone. Tuuri had no idea who the stranger was apologising to, but she took the opportunity to hopefully sneak past this Noseworthy fellow. He seemed pretty intimidating from secondhand knowledge.

Tuuri did not expect a huge ruckus to be present when she walked in the class, but there was. It was almost as if it wasn't a class at all, but some sort of conversation hub. There was gossip in that corner, where the books were hiding. There was gossip at the wooden (or so she presumed) desks, spread out evenly across the classroom. There was even gossip between two slightly older people at a desk in the front of the class, though it really shouldn't be called a desk, but a glorified stool. On the stool was a silver laptop running with a spreadsheet or something like it on the screen, but the couple didn’t pay much attention to it, being too absorbed in their own potentially thrilling conversation to notice their surroundings.

One of the participants was a man in his late twenties,  or so Tuuri guessed. He wore slightly formal clothing for what Tuuri thought was a teacher, though that may be the requirement of the staff in the school. She wouldn’t know. He wore a pair of thick-framed glasses, though his long, pale face was more suited to the wire frame glasses, like those worn by the famous Harry Potter of the eponymous books. When standing, the man would have towered over Tuuri, but at the moment, he sat on an actual stool only slightly shorter than the ‘desk’.

The woman he was talking to, on the other hand, was standing. Tuuri could definitely see that she could tower over Tuuri, with her red hair covering the entirety of her view.

Wait. Red hair, and tall? That reminded Tuuri of someone she knew. Someone very familiar.

“Sigrun!” Tuuri cried.

The man reacted to the sudden shout like someone whose spell upon him was broken. "Miss Hotakainen." he said, as he stared at Tuuri in the eye. "Late, as I expected."

“Told you so, Nosey,” Tuuri heard Sigrun﹘ or Ms Eide, Tuuri supposed﹘ mumble, making Tuuri wonder at what exactly these teachers were talking about. Mr Noseworthy, or whoever the man was, promptly ignored Ms Eide’s remark.

"Aren't you going to punish me or anything?"

"A warning, and nothing more at this stage. You kids are still new to this sort of thing." He smiled. "You'll get used to it."

He turned to the stranger, who was hiding with her clique, hoping not to be noticed. “And you, Miss Bélanger,” (finally, Tuuri has a name to the stranger!) “you are to write this note out fully twenty times by hand.”

He gave said note to Miss Bélanger, who, upon receiving the note, cried out to the heavens, while flocks of girls and boys went to her side to comfort her. The note, itself, was merely three paragraphs long, though the laborious process of copying it out was the perfect recipe for tedium. Tuuri knew enough about tedium to not underestimate its destructive properties on the unsuspecting psyche. She would not wish that punishment on anyone.

But it got worse. “I want it handed in tomorrow morning at eight forty five sharp,” Mr Noseworthy continued, “or you get another twenty times.” Way worse.

While Ms Bélanger was crying her eyes out at the injustice she had to endure, Tuuri looked around for people she might recognise.

There, in the corner. She knew that person. His blond locks looked so perfectly pristine that you could, if you squinted and moved your head to the right by about thirty degrees, see sparkles bursting from them. However, he was not doing what Tuuri thought he’d be doing in this hub of socialness. Instead, in the corner, he was sitting in a desk (a proper one. One you could put useful stuff on, though he had nothing on it at this moment), hands straddling his head like they were part of Atlas holding up the sky instead of the proud arms of Emil Västerström, Swedish genius extraordinaire.

Tuuri decided, after a couple of long seconds deliberating, to approach him and to start a conversation with the simple greeting: “Hey.”

“Hey, Tuuri.” Emil put his head out of his hands, and smiled a smile not fit for his beautiful face. It was dull and lifeless, like he was trying to hide his pain from the world, whatever it could have been. “How do you cope with the changes that happened in your life? The changes in your soul and mind?”

That was… an interesting question. Tuuri thought. Externally, she merely said, “I ignore them until I am ready to deal with them. Why?”

Emil shook his sorrows away, and for a second, it seemed like he was his old self. It quickly disappeared, and his old demeanor returned with a vengeance. “Nothing. It’s stupid. I shouldn’t have said anything.”

He smiled that same smile that didn’t seem to fit his character. “Sorry.”

Before Tuuri could reply to Emil’s depressing and absurd notions of stupidity, Mr Noseworthy cut all conversation off to say that ‘form period’ had now ended and that everyone should go to their first class of the year. This answered a lot of questions, like, “why was no one paying attention to the teacher right now?’ Tuuri was constantly asking this, though it was merely in the back of her head. Ms Eide seemed to have left before the period finished.

“See you in chemistry,” Emil said before leaving the room.

Before she could go after him, Mr Noseworthy stopped her. “Here.” He said, giving her a timetable of all her subjects. “Yesterday, you said that you lost your timetable, so I printed one for you. Sorry I couldn't do it yesterday.”

“That’s fine,” Tuuri said, accepting the act of kindness, and she headed for the door. Before she could, she realised she still had a few questions for Mr Noseworthy, barring her from exiting.

“Hold on,” she said, “How did you know that Miss Bélanger was late and not already with those girls in the side of the room? And why were you so nice to me when she got a very severe punishment for tardiness?”

Mr Noseworthy laughed. “I almost forgot your tendency to ask random questions that somehow hit close to home.”

He continued, “The only reason I knew that Charlotte was late was because I got an indication from her previous teachers that she tended to be late. I intended to break her habit now, instead of later when the consequences are much higher than simple copying.

“I’d love to stay chat, but you really need to get to class.” He pushed her to the door.

“What about you?”

“I have a free period at the moment. I don’t really have anywhere to be.” he replied easily, like he said it multiple times.

Outside the room, she saw Charlotte waiting. “What are you doing?” Tuuri asked. She seemed to be asking a lot of questions today: something she didn’t really want to happen.

“I need to talk to Nose-bitch,” Charlotte said, glaring at the now closed door. “Just… I’ll meet you at math. Tell the teacher I’m late because of Noseworthy. They might be in the mood to understand.”

* * *

The math(s) teacher seemed to have a knitting obsession. This was obvious not because she was old enough to legally retire. Tuuri actually didn't notice that since she was too busy disrupting what little class there was by barging in. She knew because the entire classroom was covered in various knitted goods.

There were scarves draped across the ceiling, mittens hanging from the walls, doilies covering the desk—and it was an actual desk, not the fake desk Mr Noseworthy had— and there were even knitted versions of various people standing happily in a cup in the desk corner. On Tuesday, Tuuri would notice that, among others, there was a version of Mr Noseworthy and something that looked a lot like that person she saw on the ‘Ed Sheeran Cat Conundrum’. She liked the sound of that title for the poster in her room.

At the moment, however, there were classes to attend. Mathematics, specifically.

“Hello,” the teacher said, noticing Tuuri’s rather conspicuous late arrival. “Why are you late, Ms...”

“Hotakainen, ma’am,” Tuuri replied. “I was just talking to Mr Noseworthy. Charlotte Bélanger will also be late because of him.”

“I see.” The teacher gestured to a nearby empty desk next to a girl with brown hair. “Go sit there with Ms Katherine over there.”

Tuuri did so, saying the customary greeting to her new neighbour, who promptly said she was from Vancouver, like Tuuri wanted to know that. Maybe Katherine wanted to show her that Tuuri wasn’t the only new person in this school.

The teacher carried on. “My name is Ása Harðardóttir, but I would prefer you call me Ms Ása, or something to that effect. I understand that you may not be used to calling your superior by first name. However, I am equally uncomfortable with you calling me Ms Harðardóttir, since  it literally means ‘Ms Hörður’s daughter’. The formal naming custom here in New Zealand is completely useless in a society with potentially lots of daughters of anyone named Hörður, like in Iceland. Therefore, Ms Ása, I believe, is a manageable compromise between our completely different cultures.

“On that topic, we shall start off by introducing ourselves, since though some of you may have known each other since primary school,” At this, Ása stared pointedly at two girls talking at the back of the classroom about how ugly she was, “some of you haven’t.

“I want you all to say five things about you that people wouldn’t know at first glance.”

Tuuri went first. “My name is Tuuri Hotakainen. I was born in, uh, Mikkeli, Finland. I really like learning languages; they give me a thrill like no drug could ever give. I like cats. My favourite food is grilled fish and I really like lingonberry juice.”

“That’s a nice introduction, Tuuri.” Ása nodded. “I also really like lingonberry juice. However, it’s almost impossible to find any good brands here. Next!”

Tuuri, being a good student, promptly ignored the rest of the introductions and wished deep in her heart that maths could finish early.

* * *

Interval was a blessing.

After a terrible geography lesson, in which the introductions were completely ignored in favour of actually starting their first internal. Who would force people to do work on the first day of school? Mr Sato would, the sadist that he is.

This first taste of excruciating pain and torture only made Tuuri appreciate the freedom she received once she left the classroom. Unfortunately, this blessing will only last for about half an hour, so Tuuri was going to use this time wisely.

Not to eat, of course. Who had time for that? Tuuri didn’t bring any food to school anyway, but that might be a problem best suited for lunchtime. It was called lunch for a reason.

She wasn’t going to talk with anyone, since she, the new kid in school, had no friends yet. Even if she did have any of those, she wasn’t going to spend thirty minutes idly gossiping with them. That would just expose her inability to talk to people about things not about work (or school, for that matter). It was also just not enough time for any meaningful conversation to happen.

The only sensible thing she could do during this time period was explore the school. She spent, quite literally, no time figuring out where things were due to her rushing here and there in the morning. Now she had the time to fully appreciate her school and all its glory.

If things were different, Albany Senior High School would have had a surly reputation. However, the way things are, the school might have something going for it, namely, languages. Opened in 2010, it was touted as the premier school primed for tertiary study overseas, with both the NCEA and IB education systems available within the school.

Of course, such a new school would have an impact on the architectural design, which was modern and sleek. Unlike most nearby colleges, there wasn’t a lot of space for the school to sprawl out, so instead of multiple one storey buildings scattered all over the place, there was only one three storey building housing most of the subjects available in the school, as well as other buildings scattered across the grounds almost haphazardly.

Of course, Tuuri, having a lot of time on her hands, explored them all. Most of them weren’t actually useful for Tuuri, since she already walked 200 metres to get to her math class earlier. The buildings all housed a different subject, the most prominent being the school library. Tuuri suspected that she’d be hanging out in the last building for most of her time at the school.

There was also a gymnasium and a field there, just because every high school in existence puts a fair amount of effort on sports.

She also explored the main building. On the first floor were the languages. Second floor, the sciences. On the third floor were the humanities. Fate being fate, she saw Mr Noseworthy again, this time drinking a cup of coffee.

Of course, being a normal human being, Mr Noseworthy had to start a conversation.“Weren’t you just here for—”

“Geography?” Tuuri wanted it to be over quickly so she could do more important stuff, like curl up in a corner in the library with a good book on Icelandic declensions. “Yeah, I was. Just wandering the school at the moment, though. Bored.”

“Sure.” He took a sip from his mug of deliciousness. “It’s almost the end of interval, though. You should be getting to class.”

Tuuri thanked him for the reminder and started to walk away. Once again, Mr Noseworthy had to stop her from leaving just to say some random bit of information. “Remember to choose the club you have to go to at the end of the day!”

“Okay!”

* * *

After a fairly tedious chemistry and physics class, in which Emil, who  lit up when someone (Dr Madsen) says they could blow stuff up, and Sigrun (no one can call her Ms Eide or they die. It’s a wonder Tuuri survived that encounter early that morning.) show their true faces, there was an unremarkable English lesson. As everyone already knew each other, some more than others, no one really knew what would happen other than a preview of the English course, like what internal and external examinations were to be achieved by the end of the year.

That was exactly what happened for about half an hour.

On the whiteboard at the front of the room was a poster, possibly taken from the internet. On it was a simple red Soviet flag fading to black. “For the externals, we shall be studying Let Them Sleep by Russian director Abram Melville.” Mr Nose I really like it because it shows the meaning of war in a unique way. Heart-breaking film. You’ll love it.”

Mr Noseworthy changed the slide to a book recognisable to all the French speakers in the room, which basically only consisted of Charlotte. “The book we’ll be studying is the English translation of Le Petit Prince, my favourite book in any language. This is as much as I can say about it or we'll be here all week. Just ask Mr Sato. He'll tell you all about it.” He clapped his hands and turned off the computer. “Now that that’s over, it’s time to look at the clubs. Choose wisely, for you will not be allowed to choose again.”

Albany Senior High School was unique for having a compulsory club specifically for learning languages. Apart from English and Swedish, which were open for everyone, the language clubs were available only to those who could speak that language or were learning it.

In order of popularity, the clubs were: Film Club, organised by the French department; Philosophy Club, organised by the Spanish one; Creative Writing Club, by the Japanese; Computer Club, run by the Maori students; Book Club, run by the English department; and The Detective Agency, run by the newly-formed Nordic branch of the International department.

Tuuri was only eligible for the Book Club and the Detective Agency. Being who she was, there was only one option she could take.

She dragged Lalli, who was mingling with the Computer Club, (despite his lack of qualification) to the Detective Agency next door, only to find only one other wanting to join: Emil. It was strange how even though the Agency sounded a lot cooler than all the other clubs, it was the least popular. However, as Tuuri looked at the clubhouse, she understood why.

The entrance wasn’t really showy enough to be something people want to join. Though like all the other clubs, the door was barely furnished (being all white with a room number stuck on the top), the sole decoration was a handwritten sign with the Agency written on it. Even then, it seemed like a drunk doctor wrote it, unlike other signs, which seemed professionally made to suit the club perfectly.

The interior, unlike the Agency’s contemporaries, was bare. There was a wooden desk with a laptop on it, a filing cabinet at the back of the room, some chairs and a memo board with pins stuck on it. There was no clutter, no papers lying around. It was very clean. The room was also very very small. It seemed like the room was the smallest in the room, not including the janitor’s closet, which must be somewhere in the building.

Sitting at the desk was a fairly tallish male with red short hair. His intense emerald eyes were focussed on the laptop screen, which lit up the freckles dotting his face.

Next to him was a female. Brown skinned, black haired, the girl would have been a shoo-in for one of the Maori, which made it really weird that she wasn’t at the computer club.

Unlike the pale-skinned boy, the woman actually noticed the entrance, and she looked up to see two slightly confused faces and one vaguely annoyed face glaring at one of bewildered faces. She stood up and walked to the trio. “Puisulirutsi what I’m doing here and not at the Computer Club, I’m from Canada and my bedsteforældre are from Greenland.” She said in slightly faltering Danish and handed them a piece of paper. “Please sign here.”

“What did she say?” Lalli was the only one who couldn't speak any other languages other than English and Finnish, though not for lack of effort. Back when Lalli still lived in Finland, he tried to learn Swedish and Mandarin Chinese. Swedish didn't click and Mandarin was Mandarin. Tuuri was more enthusiastic in her language studies, and thanks to this effort, she could now speak four languages, which made her the perfect translator.

“Something about being from Canada or something.” Tuuri whispered back. Of course, by ‘perfect translator’, Lalli obviously meant ‘meh. Good enough.’

The trio signed the paper, which said ‘Confirmation of Interest’, though, like always, Lalli was very reluctant to do so. He only signed the paper just so Tuuri wouldn't kill him.

The female looked out the door before taking the paper and putting it in front of the redhead’s keyboard. “Hey!” he said. “Why’d you do that? I probably died, thanks to you!”

“There are some new potential members here, Guðmundur, if you want to see them.”

Guðmundur looked them over once.

Twice.

Thrice.

He looked back his partner. “Anna, is there anyone else? Or at least, someone who isn’t as crappy looking?”

That was rude.

Emil, being Emil, gasped and put his hand on his heart like it was going to explode. Lalli, being Lalli, did nothing.

Guðmundur’s statement didn’t ruffle Tuuri’s feathers either since she really wasn’t paying attention to him. Instead, she was looking at Lalli for some reason, though she promptly stopped staring when Lalli noticed.

“Nope.” Anna replied, giving Guðmundur the sheet of paper. “Everyone else went to the other clubs. These three are all you’ve got.”

Guðmundur sighed.

“All right, then. Let’s see if you’ve got what it takes.” he said, pulling out a folder from a potentially borrowed file cabinet at the back of the room. The folder had the words ‘TUNA CAN’ written in large red letters. Reading from the sign-up sheet, he said, “Tuuri Hotakainen, Lalli Nieminen, Emil Västerström, while I keep playing Zamri Zamolchi, I want you to try and answer this question:

“Who kidnapped Reynir Árnason?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I promise this is an actual High School AU. Except, maybe it might be like Harry Potter in style? The high school stuff will be focussed on. It's just that I can't really think what cool and exciting things could happen in high school, so I plopped this investigations side-plot so yeah, please pay attention to that as well.
> 
> Also, some references:
> 
> Zamri Zamolchi is a romanisation of the Russian Stand Still Stay Silent translation's title.
> 
> Guðmundsson could have been Reynir's last name, back when we had no idea who Reynir was. Therefore, Guðmundur.  
> A note on the dialogue: If the dialogue is in English, the character is speaking in one of the languages the point of view character can speak, i.e. if Tuuri is the point of view character and the dialogue is in English, that means the character is speaking in either Icelandic, Swedish, Finnish or English.
> 
> Also, the dialogue's language will closely reflect the degree of understanding the point of view character has for that particular line of dialogue, like as in what Anna says, with that random Danish and Inuttut word plopped in. Actually, that entire dialogue would ideally be done in Scots, but since there isn't a formal orthography, I kinda had to make do with English.
> 
> I will not translate these words or passages. If the character doesn't know what they're saying, why should you?
> 
> I actually translated 'Puisuliruvit' myself, so if any Inuttut speakers can correct me, please do. Also, can anyone correct anything I wrote wrong, please?
> 
> Last thing: That quote is also not mine, and I stole it off a movie I haven't even watched, but it seemed suitable for this so yeah.
> 
> Thank you for reading! Please review and I will give you cookies!


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